The Argosy — page 47: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 Selina Radcliffe's Home. “J can’t have her. There! You may make your home where you like.” “This is my home,” said Stephen. “ And it may be still, if you like. But it’s not hers. Two women in a house, each wanting to be mistress, wouldn’t do. Now no noise, Ste, J won't have Gibbon’s girl here. ve not been used to consort with people who have been my servants.” It is one thing to make a resolution, and another to keep it. Before twelve months had gone by, Mr. Radclifie’s firmly spoken words had come to naught ; and Stephen had brought his wife into the Torr and two babies—for Mrs. Stephen had. presented him with two at once. Selina was upstairs then with an infant of her own, and very ill. The world thought she was going to die. The opportunity was a grand one for Madam Becca, and she seized upon it. When Selina came about again, after months spent in con- finement, she found, so to say, no place for her. Becca was in her place ; mistress, and ruler, and all. Stephen behaved to her like the lout he was ; Becca, a formidable woman of towering height, alternately snapped at, and ignored her. Old Radcliffe did not interfere: he seemed not to see that anything was amiss. Poor Selina could only sit up in that apartment that Holt had called the Pine Room, and let her tears fallon her baby-boy, and whisper all her griefs into his unconscious ear. She was refined and timid and shrinking : but once she spoke to her husband. “ Treat you with contempt ?—don’t let you have any will of your own ?—thwart you in all ways?” he repeated. “‘ Who says it, Selina?” “‘Oh, it is so; you may see that it is, if you only will notice,” she said, looking up at him imploringly through her tears. “T’ll speak to Stephen. I knew there’d be a fuss if that Becca came here. But you are not as strong to bustle about as she is, Selina: let her take the brunt of the management off you. What does it matter?” What did it matter ?—that was Mr. Radcliffe’s chief opinion on the point : and had it been only a question of management it would not have mattered. He spoke to Stephen, telling him that he and his wife must make things pleasanter for Mrs. Radcliffe, than, as it seemed, ‘they were doing. The consequence was, that Stephen and Becca took a con- venient occasion of attacking Selina; calling her a sneak, a tell-tale, and a wolf in sheep’s clothing ; and pretty nearly frightening her into another spell of illness. From that time Selina had no spirit to retaliate. She took all that — was put upon her—and it was a great deal—and bore it in silence and patience. She saw that her marriage, taking one thing with another, had turned out to be the mistake her friends had foretold that it would Gomicbooks.com